Properties are searchable and can be combined with Smart Searches to search for items based on their properties and then manipulate all the items in the search result in one go.

You can define the collections of properties called 'Property Sets' in the use interface. In each property-set you can define properties and for each property specify whether the property is open, single-value or multi-value.

This impacts the user interface you see when setting a property value and when searching for property values. Using searchable properties in artifact management is a very powerful feature.

Watch this short screencast to learn more about the power of properties.

Properties are for Guiding, not for RestrictingWhen you define a property-set with 'strongly-typed' property values, those values are used to provide an intuitive, guiding UI for tagging and locating items.

The actual value does not force a strong relationship to the original property-set's predefined values. This is by design, to not slow-down common repository operations and for keeping artifacts management simple by allowing properties to change and evolve freely over time, without worrying about breaking older property rules.

Properties are therefore a helpful and non-restrictive feature.

Attaching and Reading Properties via REST API

Properties are a special form of metadata and are stored on items just like any metadata - in XML form.

In fact, you can view properties not only from the Artifacts:Properties tab, but also from the Artifacts:Metadata tab, in which you can examine properties as they are stored in XML form. The properties XML is using the properties root tag and has a very simple format.

You can set, retrieve and remove properties from repository items via REST API, as you would do with any other XML-based metadata.